SunSep282008
Scripture: PHILIPPIANS 2:1-13
Twenty years ago this past Thursday, on a warm, clear, spectacular September evening, I was ordained into the Christian ministry. It was a momentous event in my life, and I still have vivid memories of it. My mother preached a fabulous sermon which I have read and listened to many times since. My father led a moving and eloquent prayer of ordination which, with the laying on of so many hands, called the Spirit to be present and passed that mantle from earlier generations to me. Two of my mentors gave what are called “charges,” one to me and one to the congregation. And gorgeous music filled the sanctuary. The service itself was nearly two hours, and I remember so clearly a man leaving the church that day and telling me breathlessly that the time had flown by. Afterwards there were delicious refreshments out on the lawn, and, in celebration, someone shot fireworks off into that beautiful clear night. The whole thing was, for me, a riveting gift.
As I marked that anniversary this week, I reflected on my journey in the ministry and my convictions about the church. So this morning I’m just going to make some random observations about what I’ve seen and learned about the church and its ministry.
Early on, I realized some things about myself that have been a great gift over the years. I served two churches in those first eight years, both of them in the same town of East Montpelier, Vermont. Each Sunday, after I finished the first service at 9:30, I would hop in my car and drive some three or four miles to the other church for an 11:00 service.
They were as different as two churches could be. In one there was a wonderful kinship between church and minister, and in the other there was something of a lesser fit. There were superb people in both churches, people I treasure to this day. It’s simply that I fit better as a minister in one than I did in the other. So early on, and long before I could articulate it, I realized two really important things about myself. One, I had some real gifts for this work: many people appreciated what I brought to ministry. And two, even with those abilities, I wasn’t God’s gift to ministers. This was a crucial and valuable lesson to learn early in my vocation. It gave me both a sense of confidence and, at the same time, a real humility. I could make a difference, but I didn’t know everything. It kept me from arrogance, on the one hand, and despair on the other. I read something recently that reminded me of this, and while I can’t quote it exactly, it went something like this: a person carried two slips of paper in one of their pockets all the time. One of the slips of paper said, “I am but a speck of dust in God’s unfathomably huge universe.” The other said, “I am the glory of God fully alive.” Both are true, and vocationally I learned this early: speck of dust and glory of God.
Early in my time in Vermont, I witnessed the power of a community’s care and prayers. Several months into my ministry, a youth in one of the churches had a skiing accident and incurred a serious brain injury. Quite frankly, I remember being somewhat paralyzed when I heard the news. I wasn’t at all sure what I, as pastor, needed to do. I remember a woman in the church suggesting that we gather that evening for a prayer service. We did, and to my shock, in that small country church some fifty or sixty people poured into our Fellowship Hall that evening. And while I’m sure I offered some halting prayers of my own, what I remember most was the deeply still silence that engulfed that room and the power of the collective prayers of the people of God gathered in that space. They were devastated. They knew they needed each other. And they knew they needed God. And they taught me expectancy and hope, and the wisdom of coming together and opening ourselves to God. That thing that other clergy and I do in hospital rooms with people who are sick, that thing we do at the beginning of worship, when the congregation lifts needy people into the care of God, and asks God’s power for healing and renewal—those prayers matter deeply.
You can’t be a minister and not be acutely attuned to the suffering that engorges so many people. As do all clergy, I have been through people dying of all manner of disease and accident, including by their own hand. I have accompanied people through terrible divorces, devastating job losses, and the failures of countless dreams. One that retains a peculiar grip on me happened while I was in Barrington, RI. One Sunday morning during worship, while I was in the middle of my sermon, out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman stride intently down the aisle to where her husband was sitting in a pew, and whisk him quickly out of the church. When they reached the back of the sanctuary, she let out an ungodly wail. The head usher was standing right next to them, and with great intensity he pointed his finger at me and beckoned me to come back there. So right in the middle of the sermon, I left the pulpit, walked down the aisle, and discovered that their twenty-year-old son had been electrocuted that morning at college. As you can imagine, they were absolutely devastated.
There are two things I remember especially about that time, though. One is that, as I gathered with the family on the lower level of the church building, the church service went on above us. I heard later that the congregation had had communion as everyone held hands. What I remember so vividly, though, is the sound of that congregation singing the hymn “Abide with Me,” not the hymn we had planned for that day, but the perfect, soothing gift to both congregation and family. The other image of that incident that is burned into me came a few days later. As I waited for the family to arrive for the funeral service, I watched them walk across the parking lot to the church. They looked mostly dead. When the service was over, though, there was a renewed spirit and vitality in them. It’s certainly not that everything was suddenly made right—they agonized for years afterward, and I’m guessing they still do. It’s only that, in the reading of the scriptures, the singing of the hymns, and the testifying to the power of God that is larger than death, they saw a glimpse of gift and promise and hope. Worship meant that much.
And it does mean that much. What we do here on Sunday mornings isn’t incidental. It isn’t empty ritual. Nor is it simply one among many things that the church does. It is the central thing. Here we’re reminded of all that God does for us. Here we’re soothed and reassured. Here we’re challenged and pushed. Here the heart of life is reaffirmed: you and I have been given breath and Spirit, and we’re called, invited, commanded, even, to respond in love. This is the saving Word of God. Where else but here do we get that message?
I certainly don’t romanticize church. I have seen plenty of the worst of human nature, not least in myself. I have seen knock-down drag fights; I have seen the total breakdown of trust; I have been screamed at in meetings—one man saying he had thought he could “outlast” me and realizing, to his great disgust, that he couldn’t; I have been deeply betrayed—a colleague once took my private journal and said she was going to publicize it to the church. And while she didn’t in fact do it, the threat of having my personal laundry shared with everyone somewhat traumatized me. The church clearly has no corner on civility and honor. In fact, I have been struck by the number of times I’ve heard, during my ministry, people’s shock and revulsion at how susceptible the church is to human weakness. I must say: it doesn’t surprise me at all. It disappoints me, it hurts me, but it doesn’t surprise me. Church people are people. They have the same faults and limitations as everyone else. That doesn’t change just because you walk into a church.
What has surprised me is not how bad church people can be, but rather how good they can be and how incredible life in the church can be. I have seen babies born—well not literally, though I have seen a calf born. I have put my foot in my mouth and been forgiven for it, I hope—once, during a funeral, we came to the Prayer of Commendation, when we commend the deceased person to God’s care, and I inadvertently announced that people should stand for the prayer of “condemnation.” Where do these things come from! I was once talking about Mary in a sermon, and, thinking to clarify which Mary I said, “My Mary, not the virgin Mary.” There are people who will not let me forget that to this day! I have seen tenderness and forgiveness and immense love shared in so many quarters of church life. When I was in Barrington, a church member with Alzheimer’s disease took off in his car one evening and, without knowing what he had done, drove all the way to New Hampshire. When police found this lost and confused man there, one of our church deacons drove the three hours to New Hampshire to pick him up and bring him home. Or this: when a five-year-old church member developed cancer, an art teacher in the church, who taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, invited his design class to make their own cards for Catherine. You would not believe the extraordinary creations that came from that class. And it made a huge impression on this girl and her family.
I had the same reaction of thrill and gratitude when Federated engaged in the project with the parable of the talents last fall. Great energy was given to something that both benefited others and gave joy to those who participated in it. And here’s where our reading from Philippians speaks so loudly to us this morning. The whole point of that reading is that, built into the way God does things is a rich and relentless humility. God is all about emptying and self-giving. And Christ, being God’s vicar on earth, is also all about emptying and self-giving. And so the invitation that comes to us, from God, is to live out of that center: to empty ourselves, to give of ourselves, to count others as better than ourselves, to (as Francis of Assisi said long ago, and it’s framed on a poster we have at home) “let it be your privilege to have no privilege.”
Three other associations linger with me about the day of my ordination: During that service, first of all, I received a stole, which, as you may know, is a sign of a minister’s being yoked to Christ (the way an ox is yoked to a wagon or a plough). That day, as well, a minister named Wes Haynes gave what is called the “charge to the congregation.” In it, Wes said that you—the congregation—are the servants of God, and that we clergy are the “servants of the servants of God.” And third, by some inscrutable providence, I discovered yesterday, as I reread the charge given to me by Jim Crawford, that he concluded that charge with those words that we heard earlier from Paul’s letter to the Philippians—an utterly wonderful “God-incidence.” All three of these convey the fundamental conviction that the very essence of a Christian life is service. We’re to serve each other, to care for each other, to, in a sense, think of others as better than ourselves, to, as Paul says, “look not to [our] own interests, but to the interests of others” (2:4). None of this comes naturally—naturally what I do is look primarily to my own interests. What the church does is keep putting this un-natural message in the forefront of our common life: tend to each other, develop a ministry, serve each other.
I have seen this sort of tending, this sort of putting others first, and it is always a gift to everyone involved. The deacon driving three hours to pick up the Alzheimer’s sufferer, the gift of the art class to the girl with cancer, the meals brought, the rides given, the listening done, the houses built, the shawls offered, the connections made, the affirmations bestowed: all these are signs of a humble God taking root and flowering in a community of holy people who seek and search and sometimes find a way that is strange and counter-cultural and deeply true.
Early in my ministry, I read something in a book by the Roman Catholic theologian Daniel Maguire that has stuck with me all these years. He believed, he said, in “the normative normalcy of joy,” meaning that the God-given standard toward which everything points is joy. “Ecstasy,” he said, “is our destiny” (Death by Choice, p. 216). And he learned this, he said, from his son who died at ten.
“Make my joy complete,” says Paul (2:2). Joy is made complete when we take in the overwhelming love of God for each of us, and when we share that love with those around us. It’s amazing how simple the gospel really is. And it’s amazing how easily we forget: God loves you and me, and life is richest and most joyful when we humble ourselves, reach out, and love each other. I know my mission for the next chapter of my ministry. I suspect we all know it together: “God so loved the world” (John 3:16); so “let us love one another as God has loved us” (John 13:34). Speck of dust, glory of God. Small as we may be, we’re treasured by God and meant for each other. May it always be so.